The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) has released a report indicating that while remote court proceedings take longer than in-person ones, they provide increased access and attendance for court hearings.
The NCSC is a non-profit aiming to improve the administration of justice. It’s an organization that we greatly respect and were lucky enough to work with a few years ago for a report acting as a proof of concept for automated redaction.
For us, it was a great way to showcase how our software can eliminate manual redaction. The full report can be found here, but the highlight is that automated redaction achieves about 98% accuracy overall and is perfect on structured documents.
For proponents of increased access to, and participation in, the courts, the NCSC’s remote hearing report should be welcome, despite some drawbacks with the technology. The study looked at eight different court jurisdictions in Texas that were conducting about 85% of their court hearings virtually.
The virtual hearings ended up taking a third longer than the in-person hearings (40 min vs. 30 min), but for a few different reasons. Some of the increase in time was attributed to issues with technology. For everyone who has had to flag a coworker to let them know they’re muted or that their camera is facing the ceiling, know that the same issues come up when people are attending virtual court.
Some of the technology issues will likely resolve in time as the general public gets more comfortable with virtual meetings, but there will always be litigants who are unfamiliar with technology or have inconsistent access to it. Studies like this one are important because it allows these courts to come back and remediate a fixable issue (reduce technology issue resolution time by providing better tutorials and access to litigants in advance) while still seeing the benefits of this alternative format.
That’s a good thing, because one of the benefits of virtual court hearings is causing them to take longer. People are actually showing up. Fewer default judgments are being delivered because more people can attend a hearing when they don’t have to worry about transportation, childcare, etc. Some courts also made it possible for litigants to schedule the exact time of their hearing to make attendance even easier.
It hasn’t been easier for just litigants to attend court; ancillary figures to the trial like expert witnesses, interpreters, court reporters, and family can also join virtually, which both extends the resources of the court and doesn’t place additional burden on third parties.
Participants in the report also indicated that they would continue to reap the benefits of virtual hearings where appropriate, even once pandemic-related necessity has subsided.
The full report, including its recommendations for effective remote court hearings is available on the NCSC site here.
If you’d like to find out more about our proof of concept with the NCSC or having other indexing or redaction needs, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
About the Author: Chris Mack
Chris is a Marketing Manager at Extract with experience in product development, data analysis, and both traditional and digital marketing. Chris received his bachelor’s degree in English from Bucknell University and has an MBA from the University of Notre Dame. A passionate marketer, Chris strives to make complex ideas more accessible to those around him in a compelling way.